Abstinence works it really does...

Abstinence implies the willful avoidance of pleasures... yep, that it does and it works for me. I am working on this irritation in my mind because of the mainstream media (which haven't a soul nor moral bone in its body) which seem to have Sarah Palin as a target of their wrath. Doing it by pointing out Bristol as proof of foolishly believing in the better behavior of humanity. I wish Bristol and her child all the beauty in love and life possible and I know that she is a much better person than they will ever be.

My mother made me believe in abstinence, there were still virgins at the wedding ceremonies when I was growing up and old, seemed to be fewer each year, but at a certain age I realized that it wasn't as important as love and commitment in a marriage. But I do believe in abstinence -- really it is critical and I want to point it out.

Abstinence is the only cure for addiction to tobacco, drugs and alcohol that ravage one's life - if you don't smoke, drink or shoot up, snort or swallow those things that you will not suffer anything more than better health, and that could be very good.

For me there isn't much more pleasure than a great shot, bullet striking target in exactly the point preferred and planned, and only my practice of Abstinence has allowed flaming fools to survive to be totally stupid another day. Handgun registration, gun control and all the laws in that flaming fools of the Left and Right pass to prevent my potential criminality have no effect on my better behavior - I practice Abstinence in my use of firearms, legality be hanged it will never match my will. I am one of the GOOD GUYS!

And last just for those that assume that Abstinence has to do with SEX, I close with why I don't say anything to that hot young lady over there - between sixteen and twenty-two, American, showing lots of well displayed skin, tasteful tattoo or two, enough makeup for make out, and in general a fine figure of a woman that would arouse my male interest. First, I really think I am one of the GOOD GUYS!, second that young lady could be as young as 13 - my eyes aren't that keen, third that young lady may have taken up a commercial enterprise and I am way too cheap to pay for something I think should be part of romance, fourth the government in its intelligence may have made a policewoman go out of uniform and under the cover to catch sexual solicitors and just general dirty ol' men -- and I am one of the GOOD GUYS! or so I think.

Lastly, I want to thank Gustav Klimt for his art and appreciation of the beauty of women --- and for not being my model of better male behavior. He was a very fine artist.

My wife calls me by a new name...

Seems I am really old now, I am Ha-ra-bo-ji now. I remember seeing my father-in-law once in his traditional clothing very much like the older man on the bench in the picture.

In keeping with the ancient one's desires we went to see UP and in Digital 3D, which was very cool. A family story, an adventure, and a love story... and we liked it, and noticed the children all enjoyed it, too.

Between Walt Kowalski and Carl Fredrickson I could have this old man stuff nailed, I know just how to act - like I matter and still exist. They built this world and may have to put it back together or at least fill some sandbags.

Keegan William Dungey is...

well, born of course. At 9:47 am, Honolulu Hawaii time, a seven pound fifteen ounce male was weighed, and measured nineteen inches and three-quarters of another. Father, Gideon Heun Dungey, new SCPO, and mother, Deanna are fine and building a solid relationship. Some time there will be pictures.

Update: 1 June 2009, at nine, Hawaii and Spanaway linked on Skype.com and the screen saver caught a father counselling the baby, the grandmother laughing and knowing life is good.

Keeping and bearing arms... normally...

there is a bear loose on McNeil Island, and for some fool reason they are going to try and trap it and release it in another better area. The bear swam to the island, because it saw it as a better area already... no body is asking the bear. But they aren't discussing the location of the bear on the radio anymore -- do you think there is a ranger missing?

I was host and trainer for a visiting Library Keeper from the Women's Corrections Center, he normally has twenty patrons when he is open. He was visiting for familiarization and preparing to replace me for a few days while I go off to tropical paradise with my much better half. He told me that once he has replaced me that I will be expected to replace him some time - I have ducked working in the women's facility for many years now, I hope to continue the streak. It was interesting to see my facility and what I do from another's eyes. So we had a good time, got a lot of work done and the differences in the patrons and the interlibrary loan load was quickly obvious. The Institutional Library Service is understaffed, and any illness, family emergency, general time off for exotic vacations or NRA conventions has to be answered by some coverage (normally by the Supervisors that have their own work) or just closing the library - and a closed library sucks (according to one irate inmate).

There was the kind of frenzy with Acquisitions about purchase order shopping for McNeil Island's library, but they came through with the faxed authority and amounts and I put up the signs saying that the library is closed on Thursday so Earl can go shopping for books. They gave me $2400 plus to spend, I will be hitting two bookstores and have made the coordination calls and have a shopping list, which helps but never enough. Still I know what will fill in the dollars I haven't dedicated yet.

Home to wife and Summer, the motorcycle purring under me, an admiring comment from an observer as I wait by an intersection, keeps me smiling, ya know? Oyster stew last night, and clam chowder tonight all from the shores of Washington State, thank you beachcombing wife. I finish my evening with more work on the M1 Garand, study, disassemble, maintain and reassemble. Having so few rounds left for the Paratrooping Red Monkey Zombie hordes, I will have to start shooting the Stevens target rifle again, and rebuild the supply of 30-06.

I heard a story at the range, seems a young woman came into (inherited upon the passing of a family member) some firearms, and not being involved in shooting nor politically as aware as she is now -- she got rid of them, safely. Sigh, reminds me of the Corvette Stingray in the barn behind the old rusting junk... and makes me wish I had been there to see what the firearms were. Well, she is a Rifleman now, and will be looking seriously for a rifle - if she shows up at your shoot, encourage her to try your rifle out and tell her about it. She will only need two - one that shoots twenty-two and one of larger faster bullets - I thought a .223 would work, but what would I know?

From Baghdad on Memorial Day

Don't have to say a word, some folks got it.

Go ready, get set, GO!!!!

Two days sick, two days on the road for the riflemen and the range, the Revolutionary War Veterans Association, and Memorial Day remembering. So you know I have to catch up everyone else is five days ahead of me. I am down to three hundred boxed rounds of 30-06, and ten clips full (80 rounds) and two loose ones, I need to look seriously at re-loading. I need to get back to studying for the Master Hunter, and checking some more blocks off. I have news about family, I have trips planned and confirmed, and trips planned unconfirmed and thoughts. My wife added shellfish and crab to my hunting and fishing license and then went out clamming with her friends, brought back many. I picked up ink for my printer (it costs so much!) a fine 'keeps on tickin'" wristwatch with stop watch functions (keep it simple folks!). I had a fuel station monitor apologize for making my getting gasoline so difficult since I didn't have an Albertson's card for the discount, sigh. I am getting old I want my whole life simpler, may have to work harder but I don't need tiny cell phones with all the capabilities. Large numbers, call and answer - that is it - but then I am not getting a cellphone. No time have to get going, pay the bills, pick up the mail, do my LIBRARY work. Now, to breakfast gruel and exercise and jog the morning start away!

Congress just didn't get the point...

Congress should be smarter, but they really didn't get the point when moving Memorial Day Holiday from the 30th of May to the last Monday of May to make it a three day paid weekend for starting the Summer vacations, sales and barbeques - Congress didn't get the point.

The small town in Washington State that couldn't have a Memorial Day Holiday parade in their town because they were short two thousand dollars - the budget was bust there is an economic crisis - the town leaders didn't get the point.

Everywhere in the World there are lots of Americans that don't get the point - they will miss it completely this weekend and on the 30th.

Okay, you are all better than that - you will remember that eight good men, neighbors were killed by British Soldiers on 19 April 1775, and you will remember that the statue of the Minuteman is fashioned after Captain Isaac Davis of Acton, who died at North Bridge of Concord having led his Minutemen away from Acton, leaving his wife with four sick children. When asked if you could find anyone prepared to fight to the death for our country - I would ask you to name them, and if you were as smart as you could be you would tell me to read the names on the Wall in Washington, DC from Vietnam, or walk those hills in Arlington, or your nearest National Cemetery.

This Memorial Day Holiday - visit the ones that gave all they had, it is their day, it is not Veteran's Day - not a shopping day, not a picnic day, not an end of serious school day - it is the day to remember those that gave, "that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom...." thanks to A. Lincoln, who got the point.

Funny how clearly one thinks when ill...

I dropped out of the rat race yesterday, just wasn't attending to the world around me much - I felt ill but struggling to stay with my workers and keep the library open, but I couldn't hold my mind nor will to the tasks at hand, just wanted to crawl off into a dark corner and rest up. So I gave up, there wasn't anything I loved enough to die trying... I gave up.

I don't like to be a quitter, many the times I have pushed myself to that far edge of pain and sorrow, but I don't really quit much. At one point there has to be more than pride in my power for that goes with the flickering strength and darkness closing in everywhere - when I begin to believe I might lose. That is when you only keep fighting for love, if it isn't about love there will be no more energy, strength from God only knows where. Being older and much wiser, I will look to see the cost and quit all the battles that aren't for better than I will ever be.

My mother doesn't realize how much of my fighting and killing has to do with my love of her, and dad and my other loves. If one doesn't love then one doesn't live and never understands what giving oneself up selflessly is all about. Better me than Thee. How many times have you heard that a parent would rather it had been them than their child, how many young people put on a uniform and march off to war to save everything their family means to them? It is all about love.

I laugh at kings and princes and presidents that think they have power and importance and should be given respect - if I loved them they would have it, if I am to respect them from fear then they should be afraid - what I fear I have destroyed to the best of my ability. Mostly I ignore them, there are enough fools in the world to glorify their pettiness. I am reminded that "as you do to the least of these you have done to me" yeah, got to love the little ones, the old ones, the left behind and forgotten ones, a quick smile and a gentle chuckle and tease - they are the ones worth fighting for.

So what were you living for today? cause it is done.

I find that writing the President is good for me and the exchange of views - since the Credit Card Bill of Rights is approved and the President is proud of it I wanted him to say he was proud to sign the same bill and allow loaded weapons in the Parks - like he knows that responsible gun toting adults will be up to the concern of the ones that aren't competent enough to trust themselves and their neighbors with loaded weapons. Do you think he will listen? Nah, me neither.

I do continue to fall apart, getting old is a product of breathing, if one stops breathing I understand one stays locked into that last moment of your life and some one's memory. So as a piece of me breaks I don't see replacing it, just struggle on with what I got and breath in and exhale - using those respiratory pauses for shooting almost up to the best of the weapon in hand.


Library work was fine, not very remarkable but fine -- no one in my library turned anyone in to the police (but in a corrections center, the snitch isn't appreciated much and putting inmates in Segregation is often protective custody). They found some $2000 for each institution to spend on more materials for our collections, our plans have to be to our supervisors before the 1st of June, I want to do the shopping by that time. So we started making a wish list, new hardbacks of popular books should eat that money up quick, I am going to look into a new bookstore instead of Half-Priced Books.

Weather working on Spring looking like Summer, it is over halfway through May and yes the pink Dogwood and Azaleas are blooming in the backyard - but it is a cool moist coastal day. Still I go for the fuel efficiency and saving the Nation from Saudi, Iranian and other bad guys' oil riches, and I ride the Trusty Triumph and smile as I roll on that throttle - one of these days I am going to slip and pop up into a Wheelie and go into shock. Over 15,019 miles when I return home.

What I was most looking forward to today was jogging, which is a good sign of my coming back to me, the one I liked better than that hibernating fatter fellow I have been. Most days I will walk thirty minutes or two miles, but never felt that was enough except to prove I could still walk - and it was always refreshing on my mind - and my wife likes to do that with me which is a bonus. Since Sunday morning I have been jogging daily and looking forward to that time breathing heavy and sweating well and slogging along like I was a reckless paratrooper of long ago and far away... well, in my mind any way.

When I returned from Nam in 1971 they stuck me in the 82nd Airborne Division, as a LEG, and I was so happy to hit the pavement daily and run Ardennes. It wasn't enough, when I went to Jump School in Fort Benning I had shin splints in both legs (fire bases in Vietnam don't have jogging tracks), but limping on both legs isn't noticeable. After getting back to Fort Bragg and into married I started getting serious about road work for conditioning for karate matches and general fitness. It stuck pretty good, and if I had really understood sugar, fats and health I wouldn't have done marathons at 240 pounds - when I should be a very healthy 180 pounds of mean ol' me.

No matter, I have jogged for the last four days and intend to continue through Friday, breaking for Appleseed Shoot on the weekend and starting Monday all over. I am only a little compulsive and not obsessive ever... maybe. I found forgotten coins on each jog, and today there was a young dog chasing along the fence barking at me furiously - I immediately identified with the older dog that came from his spot in the sun kind of limping along with deep Woof or two - just enough you know he is still in the game. Yep, still in the game. Time to go and work on the M1 and the firing positions and dream about long legged redheads or placing all my bullets in tighter groups... only one is a dream the other could be reality.

We have a two for... Library and Guns and foolishness...

So young person goes to the library to find information - which is a good thing - wants to know about guns and concealed carry - which in New York and Frequent Fearland a BAD thing. AND SOMEONE IN THE LIBRARY RATS HIM OUT TO THE POLICE! Telling anyone what someone else is borrowing or reading will get one fired and maybe charged with the CRIME in my modest library. What is going on?

The ANNOYED LIBRARIAN explains the New York law violated, and just the normal trust betrayed for those interested. And then says you can contact them by email on the Pelham Public Library website. Which I did just because I am shocked! I would still think that librarians should be allowed to carry their personal weapons - I trust them, although not as much as I did yesterday.

Gray Day but yesterday was bright blue...

I have had a great weekend, Saturday and Sunday were perfect and I did my fifty mile motorcycle loop in great country and weather and puttered by the Harley-Davidson folks twice (Destination) I was so cool. Finish the day with the wife, wine and time well spent, completely forgetting I work in a prison library.

Okay I wake to gray skies, but still dry, time to get into the routine and increase my performance and I jogged in gray sweats, dark gray shirt and reflector belt, blue hand weights - get out and do it. When I return I call my mother and we talk a little bit, she never has her hearing aids in when I call, but the phone is flexible. I get cleaned up, and mount the Trusty Triumph, knowing that it may rain before I get home - still, I need to ride. There is a sixty-six year old woman out there in her eighth month of pregnancy, and it wasn't my fault - I realize how difficult it is to live twenty more years at the pace of an adult that must stay ahead of a growing child - evidently no one has told her and she wants it all. Strange that I think that doing exercises during commercials is the way to get myself ripped and hardbodied, and my friend agrees, but do I have the resolve to really work out during commercials? Well, what else is there to do - certainly not watch them...

I work through the afternoon and evening, library stuff, hearing that the White House has ordered the automobile companies to new mileage requirements - why don't they order everyone to walk? We would save so much fuel and be healthier. Oh, but Obama smokes doesn't he? So we know how smart he is, how much he cares about his children and how much he is doing to personally reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere - do you think the reason you don't see pictures of him smoking is media bias - or that they have been bought? Well, I did try to assist one inmate patron in finding books about the problems with smoking and how to quit. Found some, not as many as years ago, and gave him my personal story and motivation, but remember that inmates don't smoke - no tobacco inside the prisons - or any legal tobacco anyway. I chase everyone out, turn off the machines and lock up - it is waiting on me, the rain is back, Summer only a memory.

I ride home in the rain, one other fool rider out on the highway, but the bike performs and I roar and splash my way home. My wife opens the motorcycle door when she hears me coming and I do what she has wanted since I bought the motorcycle - I ride it straight into the garage - it means backing out tomorrow, it means I will be out of sync as the bike isn't in combat parked position, but then I never ride it out of the garage, just push it to the launch position like the Space Shuttle. It is good to be home, rain drops dripping from my soaked trousers - I will love hot medicinal soup and salad, hot coffee and WWE RAW. A letter waits from my mother, with her poetry, to read. Good night. Oh, and don't forget the commercials and the exercises during.

Summer is promised here, again today...

No sound of raining pelting upon our roof to wake us gently, sunlight trying to filter in between the blinds and curtains, we get up to breakfast of French toast and coffee, and I am on schedule so I go edge most of the front yard, just one more sidewalk to edge and I will be finished.

My wife agrees to spend some quality time with me, and I pack the Caravan for traveling to the range and to work on my shooting, next weekend I am working an Appleseed Shoot in Monroe (not too much personal shooting there).

The rifle is fine, my skills need more practice - both dry fire and live, but my rear sight loosened up again and dropped in recoil so I have to fix that problem permanently. My first ten rounds after the spotters were pretty good on the standing position, and I thought I was in a good position for the sitting (wasn't but the sights were already moving) I did well on shifting the Natural Point of Aim, but my groups need tightening and I have to get tension on that rear sight so it doesn't slip. Will clean the rifle and work on the rear sightcover spring and look into going to a National Match sight. As I look at the last target bottom right I see that I hadn't gotten to that solid NPOA, but the sights were also loose after seven rounds.

Another ten rounds at a hundred yard target and I was content and finished shooting for the day we packed up and went out to eat lunch and see STAR TREK, the first movie broke and we got a rain check for another later at our choice. I went to get a haircut and shop a little bit. My wife and I remarked on the number of Sunshine motorcycle riders out on the road having a great time and all the hot rod, custom cars and chrome hangers were well represented also - the road packed but so pretty in many ways. We did get back to see the movie and I don't have to review it, I liked it well and was happy except they didn't get rid of San Francisco Bay before Kirk and Spock saved the rest of the Earth and the Federation. My wife caught up on her sleep, but did want to know where the robots and Yoda were in the story, far in the future, Dear, in a galaxy far far away.

We walked the park and came home to rest, the park was packed with young poor families and friends, Spanaway Lake was hosting big outrigger races, six man paddle teams - could have been Hawaii if it had been salt water with a surf, but it wasn't. The day is done, time to read. Night!

If you want it, just do it...

I have been wandering my mind and those of several others, looking for more than I have - it does seem like I am behind and never going to catch up - those obstacles keep getting in my way. The speed bumps on our street were softened today - more angle so you can roll over them at higher speeds and not bump, my wife will be happier. I ran into the bumpy changes in retirement accounts for Unions and organizations demanded by the Economic Stimulus Program - trying to build more cushion since the Market fled with the MSM and government panic. It seems that retirements have to be approved or that the retirement accounts have to be approved by the watchdogs in government before new retirements will be allowed to start. Control, more control, not fun...

Speaking of retirement, I have talked to two retirees, and one is making forty-two dollars an hour sitting at home instead of twenty-five dollars an hour sitting at work. His medical is going to rise soon, but that seems to be all he has to worry about in the near future - he has been dying of cancer for over ten plus years - he says he is way ahead of that game and has been blest. Another retiree told me that retirement was so you could spend more time with your grandchildren than you did with your children. I hear the sound of guilt there, but more time is interesting as an idea. I have worked twenty and twenty-five hours part-time a few times since 1994 and had lots of time for my own activities - art, jogging, chasing long legged red heads (okay, I didn't chase any, really) bad poetry and way too long letters. Except for making my week go too fast, and giving me plenty of money for paying bills I am not sure that full time employment is a real life improvement for this old elder man. My wife says something about when the mortgage is paid off, and that will be quicker than she thinks since all debts paid off mean that much is shifted to paying off the remainder.

The promise of Summer arrived today, saw it coming last night and woke to wonder of wonders, so I rode the Trusty Triumph and thought strange things: Drive By Work Day. When I looked at what I accomplished; with 257 circs, training the new guy and moving the ILLs out, in and onto the Internet and into our catalog and overdue notices and restrictions applied (more things getting in the way of circulation?) and the library lightly cleaned and visited by two DOC supervisors for effect, I could have been out on the motorcycle chasing long legged red heads. Or in reality, just making my day on the bike just too cool to ever stop grinning about.

In the more serious side of my errant thoughts is that sneaking hunch that I don't need the government as much as they really need me, cause I am not afraid of much except the Lord. So when Kevin passed the link to LIVE FREE OR DIE that he had picked up from GeekWithA.45. and I downloaded the Adobe copy to pass around to the computer free folks. Strange to think that there are people without computer access all the time... I am still reading about the Revolutionary War and Whys and Ways. Although another Robin Hood stands close in the background for picking up and getting lost in...

My younger neighbor, all Army, cut three yards and they all looked good when I got home, so I had to kiss my wife good-bye, eat my dinner and pull my mower out to play catch up - and don't you know it does look better now. But I still warmly remember riding my motorcycle back from work, so smooth, so wild under control, and the great grin that loves leaning deeper into those turns I stopped at the Credit Union to pick up checks and saw a little scooter my wife needs to zoom around town upon (nah, a Honda Rebel with attitude is what I think she needs). More bikes out this afternoon, and I suspect that many folks cut their work day short in order to be there when I rode by and flash me that secret squirrel inverted V sign. The promise of more Sunshine tomorrow, so I go jogging, rifle shooting for qualifications and love of the fusion of me, rifle and target, edging the walks, trimming the trees and cleaning up. I haven't figured out if old people don't see the dust because of poor eye sight, or they understand that life is about living not just cleaning up things that don't move enough to knock the dust off.

Speaking of which, get out there and dance - knock that dust off... before some one thinks you need dusted. The Cactus Patch doll in the picture was made by my wife in 1985, given to my mother same time, and until yesterday never dusted nor washed - but she's clean and fresh again, arms open for a big hug.

Hump day in more ways than one, about four of them...

The HomeOwners Association leadership decided that safety was needed from speeders on our little street, and installed four speed bumps and slowed me right down. Of course my wife driving home in the rain saw three of them and slowly took her CTS over them, but missed the fourth one in the gray rain and thumped her perturbed button soundly. It was still ringing as she got out of the car in the garage and I had an earful. Reminds me of the fool things people will do in the name of safety - Kevin has a long post about England's weapons safety and America's kind of lack there of. I wonder if all the words are like the speed bumps, meant to slow the thinking down so it has a chance to be absorbed, still I did want the gentleman that thought freedom from fear was a right, to eliminate the governments that I fear so much - I have much more belief in the goodness of real people than any government and its worker bees.

At work my workers continue to do wonders, and have more time than I do for other stuff, by the time the leadership got them off of printers, and access to certain places and things I seem to have more than enough to do that they once performed and I supervised - now I do most everything, except basic circulation functions and shelving. Like the NATO woodland camo GoreTEX rain gear I can't wear to the island because an inmate might steal it and use it in an escape, better I get wet. I feel so protected, none of the better escape attempts ever used camo clothing, but they could have since we do have Army Guard and Reserve members on the island.

I had great parents, they did make me and care for me, give me rules to live by and break when I thought I knew better, and re-establish when I decided they were pretty good rules - all on my own. They kind of encouraged independence of thought and deed --- more so my father than my mother, men understanding fool boys better than women. Hearing the government noting that more unwed mothers now than before - means that marriage isn't well monitored by government, that the culture continues to experiment with social norms and that real love will provide the best life for the children - and neither the media nor government has control of that.

I do know that family is the base unit of humanity, not the individual (for all the cloning and conning of some of us). I do believe that boys and girls do better with both sexes caring for them and treating them like they were going to grow into maturity one day, boys do need a older male to model from, several good ones are always better than none. I have no idea of how girls become women, and no opinion, I always look to see how much heart they have (yeah, right after the eyes, smiling lips, curves and long legs) don't know how they got it but feel that it is critical.

Those thoughts are important to me, but I am conservative in my view of life -- speaking of which, for some reason I am supposed to be a dinosaur or long dead GOP Republican pachyderm? The media announces that the Republican Party is over, Dick Cheney thinks Rush Limbaugh is more Republican than Colen Powell (while I would always go to war with General Powell leading me and NEVER go to WAR with Mister Cheney - didn't he duck Vietnam? - he doesn't know anything about war, but then maybe most Republicans don't either). But then I shouldn't base all my values on WAR, or the Constitution, nor History, or the fact that I will die alone in the sea of swimming humanity. For the record, I vote for people not parties - one of the reasons I don't like Unions, they have too much in common with organized crime and their enforcers look like thugs (although I do understand guilds and unions as a commercial enterprise).

Strange lump of thoughts in the blog, probably from riding my Trusty Triumph home in the rain, with my raingear on and careful of the automobile texters, twitterers and cellphone addicted - and the slippery surfaces and those four magnificent speed bumps that protected the lives of all those people no one has run into nor over in the fourteen years we have lived on this street - but it could happen, it could happen.

Love Dreams, they have so much and cost so little

I was back in one of my military dreams, had just driven a jeep (1/4 ton) on to an area to park it, when the ground gave out under it and it went tumbling down the sandstone kind of cliff face. I walked over to another area and looked down and suddenly the ground was cut out from under me and I coolly flexed my knees and got ready to do a parachute landing fall when I finally stopped moving. Did it and went on about my mission. Don't forget those that are out there serving, when the ground is cut from under them they don't just wake up from a sweaty dream but they are expected to go on about their mission.

Did you get it all done? I mean everything you...

The mind is a terrible thing, it keeps on working at speeds beyond time and body - so there are still many things I want to do and they aren't even getting addressed. I did get the M1 out last night and dry fire and renew the romance. I did start reading Jeff Shaara's Rise to Rebellion, as I finish Fly Boys. I did write checks, paying bills and reconciling my accounts - we are over $10,000 ahead of debts (thank you frugal wife) - before y'all turn us into the Economic Stimulus Police - just remember these aren't figures about real money and value - just the wandering amusements of a feebler old man.

When I was young, stupid and powerful I didn't lean on the government nor the Lord near enough being very certain that I could handle it all. As I picked up responsibility and needed a boost here and there I found banks, government and God nice to have in my corner. As soon as I can I am allowing the government and the banks to help those that really have needs - all I seem to have is wants and they don't count for I don't need help there except to resist the temptations. Speaking of which: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil" I will have to keep repeating that mantra as the wonder of Universal (even beyond the Solar System?) Health Care becomes a reality... there are so many things lumped under Health Care that look like Death to my eyes that I am certain I am working in an unknown tongue.

A sure sign of Spring sprung, shining Gold Wings!

I was formally invited to a motorcycle ride by the Gold Wing Road Riders Association, Tacoma Chapter WA-F (F Troop), spin the wheel and your destination comes up, don't like it spin again for another six bucks. I signed up to ride with the other riders from McNeil Island. We began and ended at Crazy Larry's behind the BI, you have to be a local to know about where that is.

I had had my breakfast gruel, cups of coffee and a rare doughnut at the registration, I had greased the chain and filled the tires up to pressure for the day, we stopped to top off on our way out of town. Our destination was Ocean Shores and mission to pick up one dated receipt with Ocean Shores on it, round trip should be over two hundred miles. Six motorcycles, eight riders and the highway was made for us. Only one State Highway patrol, zapping our lead riders with a speed gun, but we were only around seventy when they hit the brakes and slowed the rest of us down.

One bank of fog and cold to slam into and ride under, wondering where the warmth and Sun had wandered off to - so we stopped at Starbucks for the charm of the tall blond behind the counter and hot coffee to wrap one's hand around. You see why I never get the girl, I wrap my cold fingers around the hot coffee.

Back on the road and our bikes were never cooled, running well and hot we finally reached Ocean Shores, topped off and stopped for lunch at the Harbor Port or was it the Home Port, since one of our riders was under age we had to keep clear of the bars and dives. I was only looking for more hot coffee and a mushroom burger with cottage cheese on the side. Lunch done and back out and on the bikes, different route back and finish up on time, one rider picked up a staple to flatten his front tire, but it didn't go completely flat. I won a pair of tickets to a Sounders game on the 30th of May, so I don't need to check my Lotto tickets - only so much luck in one's life, but it is good to have some along with the blessings.

Safe ride, good times and Spring is really here. High temperature was sixty something, low started around forty-two, the great Northwest will never compete with Florida, California nor Hawaii, but then it wouldn't want to.

Mothers by my mother (thank her very much!)

All kinds of mothers!
Like the one you loved most,
the one who loved you and enjoyed you
and taught you and smiled with you
and told you of her own mother
and also her stepmother!

The other mother who was the mother of your love
who taught you so much!

And then you were a mother:
kissing babies, learning babies,
helping babies, bragging babies.

The years went on and one year your children
had children and you were a grandmother.

Each phase of motherhood better than the last,
even great grandchildren and mothers,
all mothers...

and nothing seemed so great as being one of them
those that mother one child or ten...

Motherhood so wonderful!
How come some women don't seem to want children?
How lonely their lives will be,
not even be able to think and remember them when they are gone...

Oh! Yes! It's work to be a mother,
but it's also interesting, and cudly,
and loving
especially the loving wonderful pleasure
that only a mother can have!

I'm grateful I'm a mother!
are you grateful that you are a mother?
Hope so!
For it is Mother's Day next Sunday...

by Melba Dungey,
mother of four,
grandmother of six,
greatgrandmother of still counting
(five and more coming and always welcomed!)

Violence Never Solved Anything...

One of my mother's favorite "I know so much better than you" quotes to squander upon my bold boy being brutal mind... I didn't believe it then and I still don't. I grew up fighting, and that was a good thing. Watch most mammals you Evolutionists and see the dominate males snap, push and shove the younger males into line - playfully, until they later have to drive them off to keep the fertile females for themselves. For those looking for religious reasons for little Johnny to fight it is in almost every religious text, myth and fairy tale. Fighting for the benefit of the pride, the clan, the community is heroic and necessary for the survival of the species, so God and Science do approve.

So I have been worried about this constant chatter from the more wonderful thinking folks of the Left (mostly) that have zero tolerance for school yard squabbles. Force young boys to spend eight hours somewhere and not clench one's fists and toss a quick punch in frustration - why you might have to drug them into better behavior. Without the release of those fight and flee chemicals in violent conflict you could get some sick puppies -- now I do know the difference between fighting and killing, and I don't hold with the young folks running around killing each other, but then I see someone that hasn't fought jumping to picking up guns and blasting bullets as the only way to settle those strange thoughts, so sad.

If you fight, with fists and fury, you will often lose and that is an important lesson. If you fight you will notice that bigger, smarter, faster and competent makes a big difference but ready and willing still counts. You will notice after large numbers of attitude adjustments that sometimes diplomacy is required to live to fight another day, that the kid with guts that stood up to your best punches and kept coming is exactly your type of guy and if you were old enough you would buy a beer for him - so he might become your best buddy instead. There are many male life lessons that depend on the fighting and the growth of other ways to settle conflicts - which only come from fighting in that famous free school - the School of Hard Knocks.

About the picture - around Christmas 1968, I am twenty and a sergeant and I left my date twice to go outside and fight at the Battery party. She thought that a little strange. In 1993 at another formal function (Senior NCOs, Officers and dates) another Command Sergeant Major asked my wife if she would like to dance, she said he would have to ask her husband, her husband asked him if he would like to fight before or after the dance, he didn't - so my wife had no dance and I got no fight, sigh. The proper answer was to fight after the dance... I do wonder if those that want to have only peace understand the light that a woman might have in her eyes when her man is fighting for her and the things they believe in... ah, I only know a little about the fighting and nothing about the romance stuff, but I do think there could be a connection...

Don't answer that...

Somewhere someone is going to reach out and try to sell you something, don't answer that call. I pay money every month for a way to be informed of new and better and must have products and services, the television is full of stuff I should tell my doctor about, get and use to make me just much more wonderful.

If I weren't such a responsible adult and only half of the team that runs this commitment, I would start shutting things down until I could reach out when I wanted and leave a message and not gather any in my passing. With free email, blogs and facebook one doesn't need a personal computer, only a keyboard with internet access - free at one's local library in America. But then one could cut that last chain that binds one - and flee the Terminators of original thought and human interaction... don't answer that.

Movie Review...

Well, Sunday afternoon's motorcycle ride had me meeting my ideal romantic interest at about eighty miles an hour, she in black leather on a black Japanese street racer, and I on my Trusty Triumph, she was young, slender and brunette and so lucky I am so old and very married. She waved and I answered, she was going South and I was headed North and I won't tell you what road we were on, she might be a reader of this blog (yes, I still have illusions of greatness). She did fit my pattern of women I pay attention to, but then I went to the movies today with the woman that was and still is all I ever need to pay attention to...

The movie is Fighting and I thought it was a great date movie, but then my date is usually sleeping in SciFi movies or ones with long dialogue and Elizabethan English. My date was once one of the most dangerous women I knew, but only in the most gentle manner - not one to wield blades nor blast bullets but certainly a bone breaking bruiser of improper unlady-like refinement. The story-line is a fairy tale, nice views of the grime of New York where the tourists aren't going, where people are probably carrying illegal guns but that wasn't in the story too much. Anyway, she liked the movie and all the story and all the action and that is high recommendation from her side. I loved the movie, don't know any of the actors and could care less about the director and camera guy --- except this was the first movie that by the last fight had my body twitching in response to the fight on the screen - and when I caught myself on the second block and combination I started laughing at myself - but really appreciated how difficult that was to achieve - I am not the kind of guy that gets reacting to movies like I was there - I can read to that level but not just watch, until today. If you never fought upclose and terribly personal since school yard bullying - well, you might not get it, but this movie dragged me onto the floor better than most. So if you can catch the matinee, get a military or Senior discount and aren't out getting the fields planted while the sun shines and the rains hold off a bit - it is worth the look. I will be buying it in DVD one day, just that kind of a movie that I will want to see again.

There are good days and there are bad...

There are really, and I wonder why the day felt so wrong and so bad. I got to ride my motorcycle to work, that was a good thing although the promise of rain awaited the afternoon and evening. I had four bins of mail and two boxes of books, so it was two trips up and down the steps but that wasn't a problem. Maybe the email with the announcement of the resignation of one of the other library keepers bothered me or started the darkness descending. The crew showed up, and worked well, the patrons showed up and bothered everyone - but that is their job and they do enjoy it. Still I guess it is the feeling of alone, in the midst of peopled plenty. There was that very formal and threatening Memo from the Communications Officer of the Office of the Secretary of State, all about blogs and their proper use and the destruction of your life if you misuse a blog or the State Owned equipment and Heavens won't help you if you actually say something that isn't in accordance with the Office. Sam Reed is a better man than the memo, but he does get protection and loses my support because of it. Those two items could have been my weights dragging my Will down... Will being my grandfather's, and mine and potentially my grandson's secret name. Everyone should have a secret name.

There were other things in the email but I wasn't picking up on anything that didn't have to do with my support of the library, I was too gloomy. I guess looking at Time magazine and People magazine during processing and finding out that I hadn't made the 100 most influenza people or BEAUTIFULL people for the year bothered me. All I know about beauty is that it begins and ends in the heart, and grows as it is shared, and I like to think that influence can't be measured by polling data, money raised, ad campaigns won - influence is butterfly effects and finding out that something one did or said had a good result somewhere beyond the scope of the originator.

I told my wife about Socrates today, it was part of a discussion she was listening to and she wanted to know why he was important - since she hadn't heard of him before. Yesterday, I processed and linked many of our new books and two about the start of the Revolution had come in, Lexington and Concord and Paul Revere's Ride. I told the inmate workers to look up Samuel Whittemore, and they did and read about him. I would get to tell the story one more time as I rode the bus from the dock to the parking lot where the Trusty Triumph waited, wet with the afternoon downpour. The rain - which broke for my time on the road going home and I was mostly dry but very happy when my wife opened the garage door for my motorcycle. By the time I had some hot bean soup warming me up I was a happy man again, blest as always. Wonder if I will ever go back to work?

Okay, just one errant thought to share...

The Sun is shining, the day looks great so I have to go gently jog and wander through my day, it is the Lord's.

The only little idea I want to share is about the current medical thought that most people are running their body at high immune resistance mode - all the time - seeking out and killing off all the bad germs, virus and sundries... Dr. Barry Sears writes about it well, he seeks to move people into the ANTI-INFLAMMATION ZONE, where the natural rest period of the body's immune system can recover -- for most of us we pop anti-oxidants because someone on television says we should, so we don't get old and wrinkled and stay sexy or something close.

I am not here to say that he is correct or anything I just want to note -- the current State and Federal governments have been acting like it is World War II and the Great Depression for years -- just like an over-reaction to little problems, mobilizing all the resources and slamming them where it looks like something has been done. And like the body that runs on constant high immunity mode - it takes too much away and allows weakness to show up when real trouble appears. Not being an economist, politician, medical practitioner nor philosopher I may have lost everyone, but I send you back to the boy who cried wolf and know you are with me - unless you are a real sheep herder from Wyoming near Yellowstone....

Good Morning, world... not that you were waiting...

The last two days have been perfect for riding after ten in the morning, but I had to roll out at six in order to make it to my morning walk to the ferry, dropping off my checks in the mail. Work was cleaning up, correcting the diversions from Perfect Branch Library model, doing the inmate payroll and end of month reports and sending to those watching out for us in the far flung corners of Correctionsland. Just as I get the old new books linked and processed and into circulation I start receiving new boxes of books, I lose one inmate clerk to his mother's every two week visit, it was Kairos this weekend, and long distance Dad's graduation. One forgets that the RED ARMY marches in celebration of INTERNATIONAL WORKERS' DAY in Red Square - do they still do that? I am sure there are some remembering the day. I still like the May Baskets from my real youth, those were pleasant and I guess they died because no one could make money on it.

As he leafed through one of the new magazines about motorcycling, which he doesn't do, my token Hispanic worker found a helmet that he thought I should get - it was an Army theme. I told him I would want it only if it had heads-up display, working headlights and brake lights in the helmet and satellite uplink for communications with my able AI assistant in some strategic bunkered location free from government and terrorist interference. But as the day wore down, questions from other branches about Friday usage - in my library it is almost nothing - 257 circs for the three hours open, Monday is always above 750 circs. I share, but we are each different for our populations, weather and schedules are not alike. But I am already thinking of the beautiful day outside the library, the Inmate Inservice Building and the ten foot tall chain link fences with rolls of razor wire on top. Mount Rainier shines, the snow glistening and the sky so clear from me to there. I could get a picture of me on the Trusty Triumph with that as a background yesterday - it didn't happen, I wasn't carrying a camera nor a sidekick with a camera.

I get to the parking lot and take off the ballcap, put on the helmet, sunglasses and gloves, insert key and start the motorcycle up, my blood pressure is already falling to happiness level. I am on my ride, and watching traffic and road surfaces and dancing down the highway. So many fair weather riders are out, and that makes me happy - they represent the best of the two wheeled world. As I go I get some followers, but they part when their destination comes up - the traffic is locked on I-5 going to Fort Lewis, but it always is on Friday evening and I always watch it as I ride the bridge over them, I take the faster seemingly shorter route - one four way stop and three traffic lights and I am on the long light axis - so I cut ten minutes of waiting on lights off of my trip, more government assistance to slow me down safely. I want to roar, twist that throttle way up and fly - even thinking I could do a wheelie! whee! but I am lucky enough never to have popped up in joyous freedom - I would be a puzzled puppy with a big car attached to the wheel I was chasing... if I caught it.

I get home and park, my wife is going to Bible study and I am getting the lawn mower out before I get a notice from the Home Owners Association, I will do the front yard. My loving wife says we can hire our yard done, and it is only a hundred and fifty dollars a month but I think that when I quit cutting my own yard, cleaning my own weapons, filling my mind with mush and other things I call living I will be sitting in the sidecar of life wishing the brake pedal worked I am stamping on, no longer in charge of my destiny.